Oysters and Scotch? As far as culinary combinations go it hasn’t caught on quite like port and stilton or crisps and lager. Then again, Scotland is home to some of the finest seafood on earth, but they fly all their langoustines to France and subsist on deep-fried Curly-Wurlys instead. As Sam MacDonald of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society laments, no other nation so underestimates its own treasures.

“Oysters and whisky is probably the last combination a lot of people would think of,” he says. “It’s almost a taboo — we really have to persuade people that they’re not going to have some adverse reaction.”

He will have his work cut out at Pearl Dram, a pop-up he is opening tonight in Covent Garden with Melissa Hayles of the Mother Shuckers. Hayles travels the country extolling the marvels of these sustainable yet decadent invertebrates. Some clearly need a little persuading (“You don’t like oysters?” I recall Brian Sewell saying to a young female colleague one time. “I daresay you should never attempt fellatio”).

However, as a sneak preview at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s Clerkenwell bar proved, it is worth trying everything once. And then again and again.

The SMWS effectively functions as a co-op. The society buys whiskies by the cask directly from distilleries on behalf of its members. It then bottles the liquid, ascribing a number to each whisky according to a sort of Dewey Decimated system. Whisky 3.152, according to the tasting notes, calls to mind “tarry ropes… diesel fumes… toasted marshmallows and drifts of scented smoke”. It is also cask strength, at 54.4 per cent ABV. The society believes in letting its members dilute to taste. I could happily lie low there for a couple of months at least.

The huge library of flavours means that, according to MacDonald, they can “finely tune” the combinations and match specific Scotches to the oysters. An Orkney whisky, for example, will be buffeted by the North Sea winds, while the peat used to smoke the barley contains millennia of rotted sea life.

Like single malts, oysters too exhibit a huge variety in nose, body and finish — as well as an elusive quality Hayles calls “merroir”, imparted by the sea, in the same way that a wine has “terroir” from the surroundings. This can only be appreciated if you eat them au naturel, not dousing them in vinegar as the French do.

First we tried a Colchester rock oyster, buttery and savoury, an amazing foil for a nutty whisky from Speyside. A much fatter Dorset oyster apparently has notes of Lucozade and the burnt pastry on a steak pie. However, the winning combo was a Jersey oyster with an Islay whisky. Not only did we not die, or vomit over one another’s shoes, à la Roger Sterling in Mad Men; we began to feel that unmistakable oyster buzz.

“They’re the best hangover cure,” contends Hayles. “I’ve done so many early mornings and an oyster or two just sorts you out immediately.”

“It’s the only thing I’ll beg to differ with you on,” says MacDonald. “Cask-strength whisky, every time.”